1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed generally to configuring base station in a cellular telecommunication system and specifically to a method for configuring an indoor cellular base station and to a system for implementing this method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In FIG. 1 a known method to install and configure cellular Base Transceiver Stations is shown. Digital maps of the building and a database describing positions of external antennas are first edited in step 1. The indoor network for the building is planned in step 2 using a network planning tool with the data acquired in the previous phase. The base stations that are allocated to the building are installed and configured in step 3 using the planned parameters. When the base stations are activated the performance of the indoor network is measured in step 4. If the performance is found acceptable in step 5, the installing and configuring of the base stations is ended. If any correctable errors are found in step 5, the procedure is repeated from step 2 using the data obtained from the measurements. Additional base stations are installed and/or different configuration parameters experimented with in step 3. The performance of the resulting configuration is measured in step 4 and compared in step 5 to the desired performance. The procedure is repeated from step 2 until an acceptable result is obtained.
One problem in the configuration of base stations according to the prior art is the time required to configure a station for the specific installation area, for example an apartment in a building. The prior art methods used are time consuming, since simulation is typically used for finding correct operation parameters for the base station. Further, extensive measurement campaigns are typically performed for finding the optimum locations for the base stations. As a result, installation time for a base station may be up to 8 days.